salt spring 17

FEATURE
GO
WITH
THE
HOP
TO IT!
WORDS PENNY SHIPWAY PHOTOS KRISTA EPPELSTUN
THERE’S SOMETHING BREWING on the
Sunshine Coast.
And it’s all in the delicious, fresh bubbles and hops of locally made
craft beer.
Specialty ales aren’t a completely new concept for our everflourishing
region, with the Coast’s pioneer boutique brewery
popping up 20 years ago. There has been very little competition
for our award-winning Sunshine Coast Brewery at Kunda Park –
renowned nationally for its ginger, stout and tropically inspired
beers – until recently when a noticeable new wave of microbreweries
began to emerge.
So much so that we now have our very own craft beer tour company.
6 salt
Josh Donohoe, who has been running Sunshine Coast Craft Beer
Tours for a year (he also offers winery and scenic tours) says he saw
the business opportunity after moving from Sydney and falling into
the local craft beer scene.
“There were a lot of breweries in Sydney and I loved what was
happening down there,” Josh says. “I knew that I would miss that.
There was only the one brewery two years ago when I came here.
And I came here looking for good beer.”
It was not long before Josh had made himself well acquainted with
two new favourite novelty beer-flowing haunts – Black Bunny
Kitchen at Alexandra Headland and Taps in Mooloolaba.
“As I started hanging out in those circles I heard about 10 Toes
Brewery, also at Alexandra Headland, and Brouhaha Brewery in
Maleny. I started looking around out of personal interest. And having
Stanley River